Pupa

When I first heard of Pupa it seemed rather interesting and worth looking forward to. Based on the horror manga with the same name, Pupa tells the story about two orphaned siblings who only have each other to rely on after severe domestic violence. However, one day they are both infected with the Pupa virus which turns the younger sister Yume into a grotesque man-eating monster while the older brother Utsutsu gains regenerative abilities.

This is, to put it bluntly, an exciting premise and Pupa appeared to have all the elements to make a memorable horror anime. While there had been mixed opinions from those who had read the manga, I figured that at the very least it would make for an experience unlike any other in recent years.

What I personally found to be noteworthy was how Pupa appeared to be the complete opposite of the recent brother and sister relationship trend in anime that often danced around incestuous undertones. Here we would instead have an older brother who had to sacrifice his own body to satisfy his little sister’s cannibalistic hunger. Rather than a cheerful outlook it was cynical one full of dread and hopelessness.

Ironically, much like a cruel joke, it was the actual anime adaptation itself that became full of hopelessness. You see, Pupa was originally announced in early 2013 yet all buzz around it quickly faded due to a lack of news. Months passed and finally a vague air date was revealed: the fall anime season. Eventually the fall anime season approached, however Pupa was nowhere to be seen. The staff apologized for the delay and announced the series would instead air in the winter anime season 2014. At this point in time there were also some bad rumors floating around, mentioning how Pupa would be a short five-minute anime and not actually full-length.

Today, we all know the result. Indeed, Pupa ended up only being a couple of minutes per episode. As you might understand, this is a format that makes the actual horror atmosphere a disservice. It is impossible to create a proper eerie atmosphere with such little time, especially if the story is to move forward in a reasonable manner. Speaking of the story, it is nothing but haphazardly told nonsense. It jumps from one event to the next with little to no explanation and ends in the middle of nowhere.

To make the story even more difficult to follow, Pupa suffers from heavy censoring for no obvious reason. It is also incredibly inconsistent – sometimes censoring a mere knife while letting loads of guns pass – and often covers the whole screen with censor beams, effectively destroying what little that was left of the actual horror.

Exactly to who is Pupa aimed towards? Fans of the manga will be disappointed with this mess of an adaptation while anime viewers will be utterly confused. I cannot come up with any good explanation myself other than that this is the worst anime I have ever seen. read more

Rarely do we see an Anime that is so pathetic that it fails miserably in every aspect.
Pupa, the 4 minute short anime, succeeds in showing epic patheticness on screen.

Being a horror Anime fan, I had lots of expectations from this anime, but it failed haplessly to live up to my expectations.

Well, If you want to know how it shows epic patheticness, then read on.

Story: 2
Pupa has a story. Yes, it has a plot, but what can you expect from an anime, which has a length of 4 min per episode. The plot is heavily rushed, and as a result a lot of things get by without any explanation.
The story follows Yume, and Utsutsu who are siblings and have a very close relationship. Yume gets infected some mysterious virus and transforms into a flesh eating monster. Epicness follows, and Utsutsu too, becomes the same.
Thus begins their lives as flesh eating monsters.

Art: 3
The art is neither good nor bad, it is average. A lot of scenes use looped animation, like the famous flesh eating scene (Oniichan no niku).

Sound: 3
The opening and closing theme are the only good thing about this anime.
Instead of watching the anime you should just listen to the themes.

Character : 1
There is no character development.
Utsutsu is your typical big brother and would do anything for his sister. Their relationship is beyond the sibling level, and it will creep you out.
Yume loves eating her oniichan's flesh, and Utsutsu loves getting eaten.
Oh yes, his limbs can regenerate, for he is a monster.
Some side characters are also present, but nobody gives a damn about them.
Overall, characters don't have any depth.

Enjoyment: 1
Enjoyment??????
Who would enjoy such a pathetic anime.
Wanna waste 48 mins of your life? No? Good, watch some decent series instead of this garbage.
Well, the music is good, so you could listen to it if you want.

Overall: 1
The whole anime can be summed up in 3 words-
"ONIICHAN NO NIKU".

read more

Let me be frank here: I love this show. It is horrible. It is absolutely appallingly horrible. I can't think of a single good quality it has. I think Pupa is hilarious. I usually don't like anime humor, but, wow, this is crazy. It's not THE worst anime I've ever seen, but, yeah, it is up there. I love it though, because it's really confusing and disgusting and so amazingly poorly made all at the exact same time, which is kind of the best combination. I try to get like everyone I meet to watch the episode thats literally nothing but the sister character eating off her brothers skin. I watched all of this show wide awake and stone cold sober and I have absolutely no idea what the over arching plot was about. And I really wanted to know what was happening because I was having a fabulous time and wanted to appreciate every second of glorious Pupa, but I don't think there is enough information in the anime to distinguish what the ongoing plot is about. Something about mad scientists? I don't know.

Basically what I'm saying is you should really watch this show. Everyone on the planet should sit through this amazing trash fest. It really is the best kind of bad. It's so sexual and complicated and repulsive all in the most incredible way possible. What it feels like is that they wrote the anime to be full episodes and then they got shortened to four minute episodes and had to scrap almost all of the plot. I have no idea if that actually happened or not, but either way that's the level the writing and pacing is on. Even if they had gotten 20 minute episodes, this show would still be fucking atrocious though. It's like 50 layers of appalling. It's like someone put Elfen Lied in a blender, dumped it on the ground, slipped on it, vomited, and spent 45 minutes lying in the blended up Elfen Lied vomit while someone else accidentally records the whole thing on their flip phone.

Also I should mention the theme song, because, wow, it's like nine awful metal songs playing at once. God damn. This is my favorite bad anime. What a show. Pupa 4ever. read more

If there was ever an anime that screams "most terrible anime of 2014" then pupa will be known as the anime to fit this title. This was an anime that was supposed to premiere in the fall and it got a lot of hype for having a really interesting story based on the synopsis and being a psychological horror. Then bad news hits this series with about as much subtlety as a brick to the face.

First, it went from being a 23 minute runtime per episode to about 4 minutes. Now with that in mind one would assume that they did this to preserve animation quality. But this only works with comedy series where a 4 minute runtime isn't completely unreasonable. Because this is a show that's supposed to have a deep story and plot, there would need to be time dedicated to telling a backstory in this world and all the complexities it presents. By having the entirety of the series be the length of two episodes (48 minutes) of a normal anime, This would lead to extremely fast pacing and a story that will either never be explained properly or having the original story gutted for the sake of time with characters that will be left as boring and underdeveloped by the end of the series as they are right now in the beginning. With story elements aside people would at least think animation would be decent if the story is told terribly.

This sadly would be an assumption that most people would get wrong as this shows second biggest problem is the art and animation. The art is so crude and poorly drawn at times that it makes me wish to watch an anime series from the early 90's rather then this crap. Sure there are moments where the art is above average but only for mere seconds, nowhere near enough time to appreciate it. And during the first episodes' most climatic moments, it gets heavily censored with a giant horizontal black bar that is faded at the edges leaving the impact of the moment to be nonexistent. there are moments like these all throughout the series. The character designs are also really boring and bland, the only thing the main character of the show has is a scar or mark below his eye and aside from that he's your typical high school teenager who wants to make sure his sister is safe.

Sound is the best thing about the show but that's like having a broken hand and saying you like the index finger the most because it's the only thing that isn't completely screwed up. The opening is mediocre at best and the background music they use comes off more corny and cliche than creepy like it intends to be.

My personal enjoyment? There is none.... None whatsoever for this series. If anyone reads this, do yourself a favor and watch literally ANYTHING (and I mean anything) but this garbage. I know there's an unspoken rule that you shouldn't judge an anime until you are at least three episodes in but I feel this one series in particular is the exception to the rule.

This series gets a 2 out of 10 on the whole solely because the opening music ranges from Meh to mediocre read more